United Nations offers advice on how to protect children online

Child carers and regulators are slowly venturing into cyberspace to protect
children from abuse.

The United Nations has released a blueprint for child online protection that will be updated every yearPhoto: Reuters

By Peter Capella

4:10PM BST 19 Oct 2009

Since November 1989, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has been adopted by 193 countries.

But child welfare groups and decision-makers are now paying close attention to the exponential growth of the digital world, where children can roam out of sight of overwhelmed parents and run the risk of abuse in a global legal limbo.

This month, the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) published a blueprint for child online protection, drawn up jointly by welfare groups, regulators, law enforcement officials and the industry, that will be updated every year.

"Children have become digital citizens in an online world that has no borders," explained Nenita La Rose, executive director of Child Helpline International, a network of telephone helplines for youngsters in 160 nations, and one of the authors of the blueprint.

According to the ITU, 1.5 billion people now go online, 7,500 times more than a just over a decade ago.

It is not known precisely how many of these are children, but the internet has become an essential tool in schools in industralised nations.

Studies cited by the ITU indicated that 93 per cent of US teenagers use the internet, while in South Korea, 30 per cent of under-18s spend at least two hours a day online.

"Based on our available data we're looking at any child above the age of six, who can just about read and write, who is going online even in a relatively low broadband penetration country like Malaysia," said Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi, the Malaysian telecoms regulator.

Driven by their instinctive curiosity and openness, the younger generations lead the way as "the early adopters of new technology", leaving their elders behind, as La Rose discovered one evening with her daughter.

"I felt I was in a digital roller coaster. She was on Facebook, then the Blackberry was buzzing, then she was texting, for two hours at a stretch.

"And then I got up, I felt exhausted and realised I was a digital immigrant: it was completely different world," she sighed.

The "Web 2.0" generation of interactive internet content brought a "paradigm shift" as well as a new dimension to adolescent bullying, explained Rachel O'Connell, chief security officer for social networking site Bebo.

"Cyber-bullying is often committed by a child's friends and the child is also sometimes the bully, so that has fundamentally altered how we perceive the risks," she explained.

Bebo carries "safety" advice and links aimed at users of all ages. O'Connell even believes social services should consider round-the-clock online help.

Although children are savvy with technology and feel emboldened, La Rose pointed out that they remain naive and need the same protection sitting at home with their computer as they might walking a city street.

Studies cited by the ITU found that 44 per cent of Chinese children who used the internet said they had been approached by a stranger, while in France 72 per cent of children surf the web alone.

While the Internet extends the horizons of knowledge and social relations for children, experts at the Telecom World 2009 show this month also highlighted their online exposure to pornography, or sites promoting violence, anorexia and bulimia.

"All our kids have this window," said Jasna Matic, Serbia's minister for telecommunications. "Alongside there are also a number of things that no kids should be exposed to."

Available online in different forms for parents and educators, policy makers, the industry and children, the ITU's new guidelines advocate a mix of government regulation, education and technical filters to protect children.

But the more immediate focus is on parents and children, in an attempt to bring real-world street sense and precautions online.

"You have to make children understand that what they see is often not what it seems to be," said Dieter Carstensen of campaign group Save the Children.

And if parents in highly connected nations might feel overwhelmed, those in places just awakening to the web are even less equipped to provide wisdom or recognise a threat.

"In some areas, especially rural areas, parents are not familiar with the technology, parents are not familiar with the English language," said Sharil, acting chairman of Malaysia's communications and multimedia commission.

"So we have, on top of the content issue, literacy issues as well," he added.

Officials in Malaysia and Serbia are targeting parents and children through media and school campaigns, sometimes in the form of a crib sheet or a mouse pad that can be kept next to the computer.

But schools everywhere need to deepen their involvement, according to La Rose.

"Digital citizenship should be a mandatory part of the school curriculum from the day that a child goes to school," she said.